Gerda FoucheGerda completed her BSc, BSc Hons. at the University of Pretoria and MSc (Cum Laude) and PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of South Africa. She joined the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) as a researcher within the synthtic Heterocyclic Chemistry group. She also lectured in Chemistry at the University of Venda and Tshwane University of Technology. She has been involved in natural product chemistry for more than 25 years, mainly as a scientist in the Bioprospecting Group at the CSIR. Her research work was centered at the discovery and development of drug / natural product leads from the biodiversity of South Africa. This involved scientific investigation of medicinal plants, through interactions with owners of indigenous knowledge, purification, isolation, and structure elucidation of active constituents from these plant extracts. She has six international patents and authored / co-authored > 60 papers on the phytochemical exploration and biological activity of indigenous medicinal plants and the synthesis of organic compounds. More than twenty post-graduate students have graduated under her supervision since 2004 and she is a managing editor for the Journal of Ethnopharmacology (Elsevier). Read More Read Less